The present invention relates to an access relaying apparatus, and more particularly, to a management method of an access log which is outputted from an access relaying apparatus.
The Internet has rapidly been spread, conventional business-counter services have been provided via the Internet, and services such as moving pictures, e.g., a movie have been provided. Further, the communication technology has advanced, thus to improve the environment under which the services are received to not only homes and offices but also mobile phones.
An access from a client to a service provider server (hereinafter, referred to as a Web server) via the Internet is generally performed via an access relaying apparatus which is a so-called proxy server of a provider for communication. Usually, the access relaying apparatus collects access logs for recording the contents of the accesses so as to research the number of accesses from the client to the Web server and preferences.
For example, U.S. Pat. No. 6,317,787 discloses a technology for collecting the access logs under an environment including a plurality of service provider servers.
The single proxy server for communication cannot process the accesses because it normally relays the communication between many users and the Web server. A method for solving the overflow is well known, and by using the method, for example, a single access relaying apparatus includes a plurality of proxy servers connected to a load balancer to load-balance access requests from users to the plurality of proxy servers.
In the conventional load balancing type access relaying apparatus disclosed in the non-patent document 1, the servers output the access logs onto local disks thereof. Therefore, upon back-up of the access logs and statistic processing of the accesses using the access logs, each access log needs to be collected from the proxy servers and the overhead is increased. Thus, the access log is not effectively used.
There is a problem that the access log is lost when a default is caused in the local disk for storing the access log.
Further, no link function generally exists between the proxy servers and the server which performs the statistic processing, and an obtained result of the statistic processing is not advantageously used.
Accordingly, the improvement of a management method and a using method of the access log is desired.